Sempronia arrived, accompanied by a matched pair of Nubian slaves dressed in feathers and zebra skins. She was explaining to Fulvia that the two were gifts from Lisas, the Egyptian ambassador. They were twins and therefore a great rarity, because the Nubians usually smothered twins at birth for some barbaric reason of their own. I wondered what favor Sempronia had done for Lisas to earn such a gift.
Soon after, the last guests arrived. They were a man and a woman. I instantly recognized the red hair and ruddy face of Lucius Sergius Catilina. The way the others fell silent and turned toward him, I knew that he was the reason for this night's gathering. I shuddered to think that Catilina might be behind the matter I was investigating. He was a dangerous man. He went around the room greeting and clasping hands. When he reached me he brought the young woman forward.
"Decius, have you met my stepdaughter, Aurelia?"
"No," I said, "but I am happy to say that she greatly favors her mother." Orestilla, Catilina's second or perhaps third wife, was a famous beauty. Her daughter was about nineteen or twenty, but she had as much poise as Sempronia or Fulvia. She was not as brazenly clad as the older women, but she was so lavishly endowed by nature that she needed nothing artful to call attention to her figure. Her chestnut hair was short, set in tight ringlets. She had huge gray eyes, startlingly direct.
"Your mother and mine were close friends," she said. "She still speaks often of Servilla." The young face was beautiful but solemn, as if she did not smile frequently. I did not remember my mother mentioning Orestilla, but she had died when I was very young.
"Young Decius is marked out for a remarkable career," Catilina said heartily. He looked at me searchingly. "I suppose you have a good position lined up when you leave office?"
"I'd expected a decent offer from one of the Consuls or Praetores ," I said, playing the role, "but nothing so far."
"Incredible!" Catilina said. "Why, a staff appointment should come almost automatically to a young man of your birth and experience."
"So you would think," I said. Aurelia was giving me disturbingly close attention. She did not wear the rings, bracelets, necklaces, tiaras and other jewelry that adorned the other women. To make up for it, she wore the longest rope of pearls I had ever seen. It looped behind her neck, crossed between her breasts and circled her waist three times. I did not know whether it was intended to emphasize the shapeliness of her neck, the size of her breasts or the slenderness of her waist, but it did all three and damaged my concentration. It must have been worth a small city.
"Disgraceful that our officials do so little to advance the careers of deserving young statesmen." I must admit that this was much better than being flattered by Quintus Curius. Catilina could at least sound as if he meant it.
"There is little I can do about it," I said. "Junior officials have little enough power, and soon I'll be an ex-junior official."
"Perhaps there is something you can do," Catilina said. "We must speak more of this."
At that moment the female majordomo announced dinner and we filed into the dining room. To my great delight, I found myself reclining next to Aurelia. This should have been an irrelevance, since I was supposed to be uncovering a seditious plot, but I saw no reason why I should be deprived of pleasant feminine company while I pursued my duties. I was still very young.
I will not bore you with a recitation of the wines and dishes served, although my memory for this sort of detail improves as the years advance. More important was the company. Each of the men present, saving myself, had been prosecuted at some time or other for corruption, although it was a rare politician in those days who escaped that charge. The traditional way for a newly arrived Senator to make his name was to prosecute somebody for corruption, the usual charges being graft, bribe taking and extortion. These men, however, had been proven guilty on every count with overwhelming evidence. And all of them were deeply in debt.
Catilina was the same sort, only to a far higher degree, and the crimes imputed to him were not all political. His bloodthirstiness in carrying out Sulla's proscriptions was legendary, but that had typed him as merely one of the more opportunistic young men of a rough time. I have already made mention of his alleged illicit liaison with the Vestal Fabia, a charge brought against him by Clodius. Even in the usually gentle realm of courtship, Catilina's behavior had been more than ordinarily violent. When he had wished to marry Orestilla, his grown son by a former marriage had objected. Rumor had it that Catilina had then murdered his son. True or not, he was the sort of man around whom this sort of story grew. More recently, each time he had announced himself a candidate for Consul, charges of extortion had been brought against him, barring him from candidacy. At the time of the last election, charges of more direct criminal activity had been brought against him. Cicero had charged him with plotting against his life and had surrounded himself with bodyguards, contributing to Catilina's already bad reputation. I cannot say how many of these charges may have been true. Catilina always complained bitterly that he had many enemies in high places. But then, few men have deserved enemies more.
I was more interested in who his friends were. Boisterous as he was, I could not believe that Catilina, unaided, represented a credible threat to the state. He was too profligate, too headstrong, too heedless of future consequences. And he was notoriously poor. He was not as intelligent as Caesar, who could turn indebtedness to his own advantage. Even less threatening were his lackeys. But just being in their company made me suspect, and I was glad that I had gone to Celer for semi-official status. If Catilina was truly behind a conspiracy against the state, then someone was behind Catilina.
"Do you know my stepfather well?" Aurelia asked. All the diners were conversing among themselves in low voices.
"Lucius Sergius and I have met from time to time, mostly under informal circumstances, such as this. We haven't had much call to meet officially. He was a praetor long before I was even eligible to stand for quaestor."
"I was wondering." Her voice was languorous, her eyes hooded and inward-looking. "He is always surrounded by younger men these days." That was a statement open to various interpretations. I said nothing. "You don't look like them, though."
"Oh. They run to a type, then?" I asked. I was truly interested to learn what type of men I had thrown in with.
"Wellborn and worthless," she said succinctly. "Greek tutors, good clothes, no money, old enough for the legions but never served." She looked at my scar. "You've been with the legions. And you've taken the trouble to actually stand for office. And you don't wear a beard."
The back of my neck prickled and I took a sip of lightly watered wine to cover my excitement. "They wear beards?"
"Yes." She looked puzzled. "Most of them. It's their way of being unconventional, I think. It may be the only gesture within their capabilities. Surely you've noticed them?"
"My work keeps me underground most days," I said. "But I've seen them here and there around the city. I thought it was some horrid outbreak of philosophy."
"Far from it. Some are from old Marian families. At least, that's their excuse for being kept out of power. I think it more likely to be good taste on the part of the assemblies."